iNow

Psithurism

Let's say you fill a sink with water. You place a toy boat into the water and it floats on top. What happens when you remove the drain plug and the water begins to flow out? Does the boat immediately fall down the drain, or does it follow the whirlpool path and circle around the drain for a while until it finally gets close enough to drop down. The waste into a star (whether our sun or one that's collapsed into a BH) follows roughly the same pattern. It WILL eventually fall in, but it will first orbit for a really long time before it does. This is only a problem if you want it to fall in immediately like an arrow driving itself into a target.

LOL! I almost spit coffee out my nose. +1

I anticipate this answer feeling deeply unsatisfying, but in some cases yes they are and in other cases no they’re not. It will vary from one person to the next. Personally, I find solipsism absurd, and I’m no absurdist.

Nobody is advocating ostracizing victims. Quite the opposite. They need love and kindness. Who are you responding to?

All of these things are true. They remain true even while acknowledging the validity of Phi’s point I’d be cautious referring to any of them as meaningless. While the causes potentially differ, the impact on one’s life can be extremely meaningful regardless of cause. It's not the depression that’s meaningless, but meaningless is often how the depressed person views existence itself.

Are you familiar with social learning theory, or even the copycat effect?

Seriously?

Who's trying to assign fault? Contagion is not to be conflated with fault.

The confusion seems to be with people who don't recognize contagion as a real thing. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718529255/teen-suicide-spiked-after-debut-of-netflixs-13-reasons-why-report-says This is a valid approach, and is not mutually exclusive with the idea of contagion.

I won't say I understand, but I do get it. This is why I acknowledged in my post a recognition that your situation is harder than that of many people. I was letting you know that my points applied more to a median audience, and that outliers always exist and maybe don't fit so neatly into what I was saying. Regardless, my warmest thoughts and best wishes are with you.

Lol. Now I want pastries

From a logical standpoint, this makes perfect sense. From a business standpoint, it’s a nonstarter. The front end capital investment required to convert existing almond plantations would be massive, and few (if any) agribusinesses would be willing / able to shift given the massive scale. I acknowledge that it would reduce operating costs, but time to ROI would be decades. The idea is solid, but much more practical for limited installations, or perhaps new entrants into the market who aren’t yet established IMO. Mostly, I just think it’s a seriously dumb idea to continue growing almonds in California where they remove vast amounts of water from the aquifers, aquifers which also contain the water people need to drink and survive, and all while droughts and wildfires there are getting significantly worse. Hmm... it seems I’ve “sculpted” far too serious a response in this less than serious sub forum.

Are you saying my almonds have been chopped?

Shouldn’t almond sculptures be called aqua sculptures since they’re so water intensive to grow? Inquiring minds want to know. <=> <=><=><=> <=> BTW, ^thats an almond sculpture.

Lol. Checkmated from the admin control panel!

I tend to agree with you, but also feel too many people give up too soon. I recognize your situation is harder than the situation of many other people, but everyone gets depressed and it generally passes. Not always. I understand for some depression is chronic and burdensome, but things in our world would be a whole lot different (and probably not better if everyone just gave up and committed suicide every time things got hard. Life is hard. We generally get through it, especially with help. I don’t have the same caveats for old age. I think it’s incredibly sad that we force millions of wonderful elderly people to feel miserable and alone and to just hold on until their body fails, even when their minds already have. We could do better

Why is there no forum for sculptures made of almonds?

Thx!

Indeed. We have domestic right-wing terrorists who more than adequately cover that gap:

False dichotomy. Do both. Win win.

Einstein imagined riding around the cosmos on a photon. That’s not possible either. First, massive objects cannot travel at c. Second, he barely fit on his bicycle, and you want us now to accept that his big butt could fit in a particle of light? Come on... Your position is surely passionate and well intentioned, but IMO is self-evidently absurd and too extreme.

Because while I’m often idealistic, I’m not naive.

I can imagine the Easter Bunny having sex with a purple unicorn while riding a surf board on a star in the eagle nebula as your unborn child films all of this as a yet to be developed sperm. Surely, not everything imaginable is possible.

He seems to be thinking of a type of Spinozism